Belfast

Belfast appears as both a passing stop on the McCourt family’s journey home and a destination in an older relative’s later life. In the family’s account of migration, it is a link between the Irish coast and the rural home they must reach on foot; elsewhere, it is a city unsettled by conflict, where a man seeking peace spends his final years before dying in hospital.

A stop on the return journey

After leaving New York, the family arrives by ship at Moville in County Donegal. They take a bus to Belfast and then another to Toome in County Antrim, carrying the journey onward by road. Belfast is not described as a place where they settle or take part in a distinct episode; its narrative importance lies in the route it makes possible, joining the sea passage from America to the next stage of their return to Ireland.

From Belfast to Toome

The family leaves its trunk in a shop at Toome and walks the remaining two miles to Grandpa McCourt’s house. The journey beyond Belfast is marked by fatigue and hunger: the father carries the twins, who take turns crying, while the mother repeatedly stops to rest on a stone wall. They sit with her as the sky changes toward dawn and see unfamiliar animals in the fields. In this sequence, Belfast is a threshold between long-distance travel and the arduous final stretch on foot.

A city in an older relative’s later life

Belfast also figures in the story of an older relative who, after wandering and drinking in America and England, returns there hoping for peace in his declining years. Instead, conflict erupts around him. He rejects the surrounding turmoil, spends time talking with women in Andersontown, and declines the food they offer, drinking tea instead. He has stopped smoking and drinking alcohol and feels that little remains to keep him there; he dies in the Royal Victoria Hospital.

Belfast within a wider geography of departure

The book places Belfast within repeated movements among Ireland, England, and America. The family passes through it on its return from New York, while the father later leaves for factory work in Coventry and the narrator eventually arranges passage to America aboard the Irish Oak. These journeys have different purposes and outcomes: the family’s passage through Belfast is part of a return, the move to England is driven by work, and the later Atlantic crossing is a departure. Belfast thus serves as a concrete point in a geography shaped by migration, family separation, and the search for security.